Also known as a YASD thread.
So I was playing LIVAN, and I was owning. Walking around with Rescue the Peasant +6 in one hand, Saal'Thul +3 in the other. Mithril chain mail +5. PF gauntlets of dex, boots of strength, CoFR, belt of carrying (and a theives' girdle too), all +5. Helmet of Attractivity, Helmet of Piercing Perception +5, Helmet of Brilliance +6. Great stats including upper-20's Int, 6 scrolls of charging at one point, lots of other leftover scrolls, a green light crystal severed head of Rondol the Kobold Patriarch (yeah, I preserved it), chaotic gods were quite happy with me. I felt I was well on my way to win #2.
So I wanted to do some sci-talking. Maybe push my Int up high enough to get dragon hide, or better, octiron. So I figured hey! I have about a dozen assorted books lying around in this box, sitting next to Muramasa and some other fancy-pants weapons. Why not read them all? Reading books trains Int, right?
Seems not, or at least, not in LIVAN. My Int didn't budge. My Wis skyrocketed, fortunately, but fat load of good that did me -- every god loathed me when I was done, so I couldn't get an angel for the life of me. I dumped almost the entire contents of UT4, including all but one light crystal, on an altar to Cruentus, and only got back up to "angry". I shrugged and kept on truckin'. After botching an attempt to buy some bananas (Damn you invisibility!) in New Attnam, I again shrugged and slaughtered the invaders, freeing the populace. I had hoped to sci-talk Decos, but oh well, I guess I'll just go kill the Enner like I'd been planning to do anyways.
So I got to the Enner level. Quite confidant, and rightly so: there was no way that beasty was going to stop me. I whipped out the appropriate wands: teleport, haste, lightning. Hasted myself, put that wand away, and tried to teleport up the corridor from Frank Sinatra. Whoops, that's just a room. OK, lets teleport a bit closer. No, that's a wall, now I'm further away. Alright, lets go RIGHT NEXT TO where he was standing four or five turns ago. He has to have moved, right?
Well, yes, he did -- to the other side of the spot. I was lucky however, and managed to get two rounds of melee in on him before he got to react. But when he reacted, it was with a vengeance. First he panicked, and took a step away. Then, he screamed, immediately putting about my entire body into near-death.
I couldn't chase him down. Too dangerous. So what did I do, I fired off my wand of lightning. Fortunately for me, it hit his head and put him out cold. Unfortunately for me, it then carried on, bounced off the far wall, and came flying back at me, blasting off my arm and leg, rendering me panicked. So while Enner was no longer an immediate threat to me, I was no longer an immediate threat to him either.
I reconsidered my tactic. Rather than shoot straight down the hall, I decided to shoot at an angle, bouncing the lightning off the walls to hit him. It worked, but he didn't die. I decided to try a second shot at the same angle. This one didn't work. This one went in the hole the first one had created, hit a corner, and came flying straight back out at me.
Lessons Learned!
#1: Having 20 Wis doesn't help if none of the gods will loan you an angel.
#2: Shopkeepers do not have See Invisibility (though they really should).
#3: Wands of Striking are better than Wands of Lightning.